Incidental Vocabulary Learning

Through Listening to Teacher Talk

ZHOUHAN JIN1 AND STUART WEBB2
1
University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Education, 1137 Western Road, London, ON N6G 1G7,
Canada Email: zjin65@uwo.ca
2
University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Education, 1137 Western Road, London, ON N6G 1G7,
Canada Email: swebb27@uwo.ca

This study investigated incidental learning of single-word items and collocations through listening to
teacher talk. Although there are several studies that have investigated incidental vocabulary learning
through listening, no intervention studies have explicitly investigated the extent to which listening to
teachers in a classroom context might contribute to vocabulary learning. The present study fills this gap.
Additionally, the study explored the relationship between vocabulary learning gains and two factors:
frequency of occurrence and first language (L1) translation. A meaning-recall test and a multiple-choice
test were used to evaluate learning gains. The results indicated that (a) listening to teacher talk has
potential to contribute to vocabulary learning of both single-word items and collocations, (b) using L1
translation to explain target word meanings contributed to larger gains on the immediate posttest, (c)
frequency of occurrence was not a significant predictor of incidental vocabulary learning.
Keywords: incidental vocabulary learning; teacher talk; collocation; frequency of occurrence; L1 transla-
tion

DEFINITIONS OF INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY
learning vary among studies, but two are com-
monly used in research investigating second lan-
guage (L2) vocabulary learning. The key crite-
ria in the first definition is whether learners are
aware of a subsequent vocabulary test: If learn-
ers know that they will be tested, word learning
is considered to be intentional, whereas if they
are unaware of an upcoming vocabulary test, word
learning is considered to be incidental (Hulstijn,
2001). The second definition regards incidental
vocabulary learning as a by-product of the use
of language (Ellis, 1999; Webb & Nation, 2017;
Wode, 1999). Despite the large number of studies
investigating incidental vocabulary learning (e.g.,
Pellicer–Sánchez, 2017; Waring & Takaki, 2003;
Wode, 1999), there are often questions about
whether a study is measuring incidental or in-
tentional word learning. This is perhaps due to
the labels incidental and intentional, and the fact
The Modern Language Journal, 104, 3, (2020)
DOI: 10.1111/modl.12661
0026-7902/20/550–566 $1.50/0
© National Federation of Modern Language Teachers
Associations
that it is quite easy to see some degree of inten-
tional learning occurring when encountering un-
known words when reading or listening (Webb,
2020). The place of learning (classroom vs. at
home), the support for comprehension (dictio-
naries, teachers, peers), and the inclusion of tex-
tual enhancement or glossing, may all affect the
extent to which learners focus on words. However,
they do not affect the purpose of the reading or
listening task (comprehension), and more impor-
tantly, they do not conflict with either of the defi-
nitions of incidental learning.
Incidental vocabulary learning plays an es-
sential role in L2 learning. Learners may gain
more knowledge of words that are encountered
in context (e.g., form–meaning connection,
collocation, word parts, constraints on use) than
words that are learned deliberately in exercises
(Webb, 2007; Webb & Nation, 2017). Thus, when
words are encountered repeatedly in context,
learners may not only enrich their vocabulary
size but also develop a deeper understanding of
vocabulary.
The amount of L2 input that learners en-
counter plays a large role in determining whether
L2 words are learned incidentally (Webb &
Zhouhan Jin and Stuart Webb
Nation, 2017). For example, English-as-a-foreign-
language (EFL) learners may not receive an
adequate amount of L2 oral or written input out-
side of the classroom for much incidental word
learning to occur (Webb & Nation, 2017). In the
EFL context, listening to teachers might often
be the main source of oral input (Krashen, 1982;
Macaro & Tian, 2015; Meunier, 2012). The high
proportion of teacher talking time—more than
two thirds of classroom time on average, reported
by Meunier (2012)—can be seen as a common
type of input in many EFL teaching contexts.
This article examines incidental vocabulary ac-
quisition of both single-word items and colloca-
tions through listening to teachers. A secondary
aim of the present research was to examine
whether the use of L1 translation by teachers, and
frequency of occurrence, were associated with in-
creased vocabulary learning. Many studies pro-
vide evidence that multiple exposures to a word
leads to vocabulary acquisition (e.g., Vidal, 2011;
Webb, Newton, & Chang, 2013), and research sug-
gests that the elaboration of meaning in spoken
and written input positively influences word learn-
ing (e.g., Lee & Levine, 2020; Zhao & Macaro,
2016). However, at present there does not appear
to be any research that has looked at whether ei-
ther of these two factors contribute to incidental
vocabulary learning through listening to teacher
talk.
INVESTIGATIONS OF WORD LEARNING
THROUGH LISTENING
A large number of L2 studies show that vocab-
ulary can be learned incidentally through read-
ing (e.g., Waring & Takaki, 2003; Webb & Chang,
2015). For example, Waring and Takaki (2003)
found that after reading the graded reader A Lit-
tle Princess, L2 learners recognized the forms of
15.3 out of 25 (60%) target words, and 4.6 out of
25 (18.4%) of the meanings of the target words
on an immediate posttest. In a two-term exten-
sive reading program, Webb and Chang (2015)
found that from pretest to immediate posttest,
the vocabulary learning gains for EFL learners
in Term 1 were 63.18%, 44.64%, and 28.12% in
high-, intermediate-, and low-level groups, respec-
tively. They also found that the learning gains in
Term 2 were consistent with those in Term 1.
Relatively few L2 studies have investigated in-
cidental vocabulary learning through listening in
comparison to reading. Vidal (2011) compared
the effects of listening and reading on incidental
vocabulary acquisition and retention of L2 vocab-
ulary. She found that average acquisition ranged
551
from 2.5 to 10 out of 36 words for the listening
group, while the average acquisition for the read-
ing group ranged from 7 to 13.5. Brown, War-
ing, and Donkaewbua (2008) examined the ex-
tent to which English vocabulary was acquired
by EFL learners through reading, reading-while-
listening, and listening to stories. After three reg-
ular 90-minute classes at intervals of 2 weeks, they
found that listening was the least effective way of
learning vocabulary with gains of 8.2 of 28 words
(29%) on a meaning recognition test and gains
of 0.56 of 28 words (2%) on a meaning-recall test.
In contrast, reading while listening contributed to
learning gains of 13.31 (48%) and 4.39 (16%) on
the two tests. This rate of acquisition was followed
closely by the reading mode, which yielded gains
of 12.54 (45%) on the recognition test and 4.1
(15%) on the recall test.
LEARNING THROUGH ATTENDING TO
TEACHER TALK
Although oral input is an essential component
for language learning (Vidal, 2003, 2011), and
oral input provided by teachers is commonly re-
garded as vital in developing a second language
(Van Patten, 2003), very few studies have explic-
itly investigated the extent to which teacher talk
contributes to vocabulary learning.
Teacher talk, the teacher’s speech that lan-
guage learners hear in class, is the most funda-
mental type of input from which to learn new vo-
cabulary (Horst, 2010). One difference between
listening more generally and listening to teach-
ers is that teachers could provide comprehensible
input to learners (Krashen, 1989). Teachers usu-
ally modify and clarify input interactionally with
students, and likewise, students have opportuni-
ties to receive teacher feedback on their output—
both of which contribute to vocabulary learning
(Ellis & He, 1999). Teacher talk can be catego-
rized in different ways. Horst (2010) described the
following five types of teacher talk: classroom and
activity management, language-focused talk, text-
based input, discussion of text-based input, and
personal anecdotes.
The present study investigated listening to
teachers’ personal anecdotes in class in a series of
4- to 6-minute monologues with teacher–student
interactions in between. Because this is only one
of the five types of teacher talk listed by Horst
(2010), it is clearly not representative of all forms
of teacher talk. However, investigating incidental
vocabulary learning through all of the different
forms of teacher talk is probably beyond the
scope of any single study. The type of listening
552
experience examined in the present study is very
common in the Chinese EFL classroom where
the present study took place. This context is
typically described as ‘teacher-centered’ (Liu &
Littlewood, 1997; Zhang & Wang, 2009) with
teachers spending most of the classroom time
teaching and questioning, while students’ in-
volvement is mainly listening instead of doing
(Liu & Littlewood, 1997).
Perhaps the reason for the lack of studies look-
ing at incidental vocabulary learning through lis-
tening to teachers is that investigating listening in
the classroom presents challenges (Horst, 2010).
Although some studies have advocated the poten-
tial for vocabulary learning through listening to
teachers, these studies have involved the analysis
of corpora made up of samples of teacher talk
rather than investigating learning in a real class-
room setting. For example, Meara, Lightbown,
and Halter (1997) focused on classroom teacher
speech by examining which words occurred in
the classroom. They found that teacher speech
appeared to offer English-as-a-second-language
(ESL) learners more opportunities to hear lower
frequency words (words outside of the 2,000 most
frequent word families and the university word
list) in class than they had expected. Meara et al.
(1997) found that over the course of a single
day, students were exposed to 50 lower frequency
words—or 250 lower frequency words in a week.
The results showed that teacher speech appeared
to be lexically rich—hundreds of lower frequency
words were used per week—and would likely con-
tribute to student vocabulary learning. In a follow-
up study, Horst (2009) examined a much larger
104,000-word corpus of teacher speech. Her re-
sults also suggested that teacher discourse may
contribute to incidental vocabulary learning. She
found that ESL students were exposed to 700 dif-
ferent word families in about 4.5 hours of listen-
ing to teachers; approximately 131 of these items
were lower frequency words. In a second study,
Horst (2010) examined the extent to which lower
frequency words were repeated in a corpus of
121,000 words of teacher speech gathered over
18 successive ESL conversation courses. She re-
ported that incidental vocabulary gains through
listening to teachers were likely to have been min-
imal, because there were relatively few words that
were encountered six or more times in a class,
which may be insufficient for vocabulary learning.
While corpus-based studies provide a useful in-
dication of the potential for learning, interven-
tion studies are necessary to determine the ex-
tent to which unknown vocabulary might actually
be learned through listening to teachers. Wode
The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
(1999) indirectly examined incidental vocabulary
learning through listening to teacher talk. He in-
vestigated incidental vocabulary learning in the
classroom by comparing English language out-
comes in English immersion (IM) and in non-IM
groups. He found that IM provided large num-
bers of opportunities for incidental learning that
contributed to vocabulary growth. Because some
of the words learned were not found in course ma-
terials, he suggested that learning likely resulted
from listening to teacher speech.
Collocations are also likely to be encountered
frequently in spoken input (Shin & Nation, 2008).
Definitions of collocations have been commonly
operationalized through two approaches. The
first is the phraseological approach, where word
combinations are of restricted co-occurrence
(Cowie, 1994; Nguyen & Webb, 2017). The sec-
ond is a frequency-based or statistical approach,
which involves searching corpora to identify word
combinations (González-Fernández & Schmitt,
2015; Nguyen & Webb, 2017). Among different
types of collocations, grammatical (e.g., preposi-
tion + noun) and lexical collocations (e.g., ad-
verb + adjective) are the two most common classi-
fications (Begagic, 2016). Research has indicated
that 58.6% of spoken discourse is made up of col-
locations (Erman & Warren, 2000), and colloca-
tions in spoken discourse are 50% to 100% more
frequent than in written discourse (Shin & Na-
tion, 2008). However, no studies to date have re-
vealed whether collocations can be learned inci-
dentally through listening to teacher talk. Only
a small number of studies have investigated the
acquisition of collocations in the classroom (e.g.,
Pellicer–Sánchez, 2017; Webb et al., 2013), and
research shows that L2 learners, especially Chi-
nese learners, find it difficult to learn collocations
(Chan & Liou, 2005). The degree to which L1
and L2 word sequences overlap affects the ease
with which they are learned (Nesselhauf, 2003).
English collocations are incongruent with Chi-
nese equivalent meanings to some extent (Duan
& Qin, 2012). For example, the Chinese meaning
of , is equivalent to turn on in turn on the light,
open in open the box, unfold in unfold the letter. This
may lead Chinese learners to depend on a gen-
eral term to express L2 meanings and cause the
production of unnatural L2 word combinations.
FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO
INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING
There are many factors that affect whether
words are learned incidentally through spoken
input, and research indicates that different
Zhouhan Jin and Stuart Webb
modes of input may require different numbers of
encounters for vocabulary learning to occur. Vi-
dal’s (2011) results indicated that more exposure
to target items were required for word learning to
occur through listening than reading. The great-
est vocabulary gains occurred between two and
three encounters during reading, whereas the
greatest increase occurred when learners heard
words five and six times during listening (Vidal,
2011). Van Zeeland and Schmitt (2013) suggested
that it took more than 15 encounters to inciden-
tally learn words through listening. They showed
that although knowledge of the spoken forms and
grammatical function of words were developed
with relatively few exposures (e.g., 7 encounters),
more than 15 occurrences appeared to be needed
to fully develop and retain this knowledge. More-
over, because knowledge of form–meaning con-
nection was particularly unaffected by frequency,
they also suggested that listeners may need to en-
counter words more than 20 times, and perhaps
50 to 100 times, to develop the ability to recall
a word’s meaning. These very different numbers
highlight the need for research designed to clarify
the role of frequency of occurrence in acquiring
new vocabulary through listening to teacher talk.
Another factor that may be positively associated
with incidental learning of words through listen-
ing to teacher talk, is explanation of word mean-
ings. Webb and Nation (2017) suggested that
incidental vocabulary learning is more likely to
be successful if teachers deliberately explain word
meanings in the L2 classroom. Zhao and Macaro
(2016) compared the effects of explaining word
meanings in L1 and L2-only explanations on
vocabulary acquisition. They found that partic-
ipants who received explanation outperformed
those who did not receive any word explanation,
and teachers using the L1 yielded gains of 12
more words on average than those using L2-only
explanations. Hennebry et al. (2017) compared
the effects of listening to passages with listening
followed by the teacher’s instruction of L2 def-
initions or L1 equivalents of target words. The
results showed that learning occurred in all three
conditions and providing additional instruction
about target words led to the greatest amount
of vocabulary learning. Lee and Levine (2020)
also found that both intermediate and advanced
EFL learners who received teacher explanation
of target words in L1 during listening tasks could
acquire more vocabulary than learners who did
not receive an L1 explanation. In addition, they
found that teacher explanation of word meanings
helped intermediate learners have better reten-
tion in the long term. Because the L1 is often
553
encountered in real EFL classrooms, the current
study attempts to look at how the use of L1 trans-
lation during listening may influence learning.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The present study seeks to investigate the ef-
fects of listening to teachers on incidental learn-
ing of single-word items and collocations. In ad-
dition, it aims to shed light on two variables (fre-
quency of occurrence, L1 translation) that might
influence incidental vocabulary learning in L2
classrooms. Accordingly, the following research
questions were posed:
RQ1. Does listening to teacher talk lead to in-
cidental vocabulary learning of single-
word items?
RQ2. Does listening to teacher talk lead to in-
cidental vocabulary learning of colloca-
tions?
RQ3. What is the relationship between word
learning through listening to teacher
talk and the following variables: fre-
quency of occurrence and L1 transla-
tion?
METHOD
Participants
A quasi-experimental study was conducted in
an EFL context with 140 participants ranging in
age from 18 to 21. The participants were students
majoring in English at a university in China and
were considered to be relatively advanced users
of English within the Chinese EFL context. All
participants had been learning English for a min-
imum of 10 years. They had been randomly as-
signed by the university to five different classes.
These classes were then randomly assigned to ex-
perimental or control groups.
The updated Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT;
Webb, Sasao, & Ballance, 2017) was administered
in a paper-and-pencil format to the participants
to determine their prior vocabulary knowledge.
The participants were told that the purpose of
the study was to investigate listening comprehen-
sion and that the administration of the VLT was
to determine their vocabulary levels, because vo-
cabulary knowledge is correlated with listening
comprehension. Schmitt, Schmitt, and Clapham
(2001) suggested that a score of 26/30 or higher
indicates mastery of a VLT level. The participants
achieved an average raw score of 82 out of 90 on
the first three levels combined, indicating knowl-
edge of approximately 2,700 of the most frequent
554
TABLE 1
Means and Standard Deviations of the Five Word Frequency Levels
1,000 2,000
Group M SD M SD
Experimental (n = 86) 29.7 1.14 28.4
Control (n = 54) 29.5 1.14 26.9
Total (N = 140) 29.6 1.14 27.8
Note. M = mean; SD = standard deviation. Maximum score is 30.
3,000 words. A chi-square test on the vocabulary
level category between the groups indicated that
the vocabulary level of the participants was statis-
tically equivalent between the groups, χ 2 (4, N =
140) = 7.334, p = .119. Table 1 shows the mean
scores at each of the five word-frequency levels of
the VLT for the two groups.
Materials
The material was a video-taped English lan-
guage talk given by a nonnative speaker who was
familiar with the L2 learning context. The instruc-
tor had 1 year of experience teaching English in
China at the university level. Using a video-taped
talk ensured that word-related variables were pre-
cisely controlled. The teacher’s anecdotes focused
on life experiences both in China and Canada.
Because the material was relevant and familiar to
the participants’ study and life, they were likely
to pay more attention to the content rather than
the language encountered in the input. The in-
structor spoke as naturally as possible, in the same
way that language teachers typically talk to their
students in university EFL classes in China. The
video was 26 minutes long and contained 2,901
running words. However, the video was not viewed
as a single 26-minute monologue. Instead, it was
viewed in short segments of approximately 4–6
minutes in length with teacher–student interac-
tion distributed between each segment (see the
Treatment section). The rate of speech in the
video was 112 tokens per minute. Native speakers
of English tend to deliver speech at a rate of ap-
proximately 170 tokens per minute (Blau, 1990).
However, Dunkel (1988) regarded 107 words per
minute (wpm) as ‘lecturelike’ speed and 165 wpm
as ‘broadcast’ speed. As the teacher delivered
speech to EFL students—who might have found
it hard to comprehend English speech when spo-
ken at a nativelike speed—the rate of speech was
considered to be appropriate.
The spoken text in the video was expected to
be comprehensible to the participants. Because
The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
3,000 4,000 5,000
M SD M SD M SD
1.9 25.3 3.4 19.0 4.9 15.0 5.7
2.8 23.7 4.2 17.8 5.0 13.3 5.6
2.4 24.7 3.8 18.5 4.9 14.3 5.7
it was delivered by a teacher, who controlled her
rate of speech and used L1 translations as well as
visual support and gestures, the participants could
better comprehend the spoken input (any visual
support and gestures were not related to target
words). Additionally, based on the teacher’s expe-
rience with students with the same learning pro-
file at the university, the content and vocabulary
encountered in the teacher’s anecdotes was con-
sidered to be at the appropriate level for partici-
pants to understand.
Target Vocabulary
Eighteen single-word items and ten colloca-
tions were selected as the target vocabulary. The
target single-word items were words that were
less frequent than the most frequent 3,000 words
in Nation’s (2012) vocabulary lists based on the
British National Corpus and the Corpus of Con-
temporary American English (BNC/COCA lists).
The target single-word items were divided into two
sets of nine items. For one set of target words, the
word meanings were translated in the L1 (Man-
darin), while for the other set, no translation
was provided for the target word meanings. The
single-word items in the corresponding two sets
had the same frequency of occurrence, and num-
ber of letters. Also, each set contained two nouns,
three verbs, and four adjectives. The target single-
word items are presented in Table 2.
The reason for having two sets of target single-
word items was to investigate whether words that
were translated during the class were learned bet-
ter than those that were not translated. It is im-
portant to note that the translated words were
not taught to students. Instead, the teacher sim-
ply translated a L2 target single word by provid-
ing its L1 meaning to support the participants’
listening comprehension and then continued her
monologue. The translations can be found in Ta-
ble 2. Because the focus of listening and the in-
clusion of translation was for the purpose of un-
derstanding rather than learning vocabulary, the
Zhouhan Jin and Stuart Webb 555
TABLE 2
Target Single-Word Items

Set 1 Set 2

Target Word FoO Translation Target Word FoO Translation

shovel 9 ; frigid 9 No

hardy 4  lousy 4 No
strenuous 4  ferocious 4 No
savor 10  crave 10 No
blizzard 7  fabulous 7 No
persevere 6  excursion 6 No
glum 5  hiss 5 No
adept 3  elude 3 No
gravy 4  toque 4 No

Note. FoO = frequency of occurrence.

TABLE 3
Node Word Frequency Level and Frequency of Occurrence (FoO) of the Target Collocations

Frequency Node Collocate FoO MI Score

1,000 comfort take 4 4.23

1,000 talk small 4 3.97
1,000 term long 4 7.38
2,000 pleasure feel 3 3.52
2,000 knowledge gain 6 3.71
2,000 research do 5 3.28
2,000 feature important 6 5.03
3,000 confidence lose 4 5.58
3,000 approval get 5 3.11
3,000 routine become 4 4.91

Note. MI = mutual information.

learning gains should be regarded as incidental (a
by-product of the task).
The ten collocations were made up of seven
verb–noun collocations and three adjective–noun
collocations. All 10 items had mutual information
(MI) scores above three in COCA indicating a sta-
tistical strength of co-occurrence typical of collo-
cations. For example, the highest MI score of the
collocation long term is 7.38, indicating that the
association between the node word term and its
collocate long is the strongest. The collocation get
approval had the lowest MI score of 3.11, which
means the association between get and approval is
not as strong as the rest of the collocations. All
of the collocations were made up of words that
the participants were likely to know from the one
to three word-frequency levels in Nation’s (2012)
BNC/COCA word lists. In a pilot study, the tar-
get collocations were found to be unknown to
L2 learners with a similar background and learn-
ing profile as the participants (the data from the
learners in the pilot study was not included in the
results). A full list of target collocations is pre-
sented in Table 3.
Treatment
The treatment for the experimental group
was completed in a classroom at the partici-
pants’ university over a 40-minute period. The 40
minutes consisted of listening to 26 minutes of
the teacher’s video-taped anecdotes and approxi-
mately 14 minutes of teacher–student interaction.
It is important to recall that the participants did
not watch one video of 26 minutes of monologue.
Instead, they watched short 4–6-minute segments
of the video with teacher–student interaction dis-
persed in between each segment.
The teacher–student interaction began with
open questions raised by the classroom teacher,
leading to student discussion followed by teacher
feedback (the questions are shown in Ap-
pendix A). The sequence of the discourse chain
556
(initiation–response–feedback) is a common in-
structional practice found in EFL classrooms in
China (Cullen, 1998). The video was stopped
several times during the class and the instruc-
tor raised questions related to the topic, so that
teacher–student interaction occurred before, dur-
ing, and after watching the video. The teacher in
the video used the slightly slowed down lecture
pace as described before, L1 translation, and vi-
sual support as well as gestures to make spoken
input natural and comprehensible. The questions
were easy to discuss and were related to the top-
ics of the video. During the study, the questions,
visual images, and the teacher’s gestures were de-
signed to be unrelated to any of the target words,
and unlikely to elicit any of the target vocabulary
in the teacher–student interaction. Thus, all tar-
get single words and collocations were encoun-
tered only by the participants when listening to
the teacher’s video-taped anecdotes. At the end of
the treatment session, all note-taking sheets were
collected to avoid further encounters with the tar-
get words, and then the participants were given an
immediate posttest consisting of a meaning-recall
test followed by a multiple-choice test in order to
examine the effect of listening to teacher talk on
vocabulary learning. The control group did not
complete the treatment but did complete all tests
on the same days.
The target single-word items were divided into
two sets. Words in Set 1 were translated into the L1
to support comprehension, and then the teacher
continued on with her speech. In contrast, when
words in Set 2 were spoken, they were not trans-
lated by the teacher. For example, when the stu-
dents encountered words such as hardy in Set 1,
they also heard its Chinese definition 
. Because it would be unnatural for teachers to
translate every occurrence of an unknown word,
no matter how many times the word was used in
class, it was only translated into the L1 the first two
times. The occurrence of the words in the two sets
and the collocations were randomly distributed
within the 26-minute talk.
All participants in the experimental group were
told that the purpose of this study was to inves-
tigate their listening comprehension of approx-
imately 25 minutes of video-taped teacher talk.
These instructions should have focused the par-
ticipants’ attention toward the content of the
teacher’s anecdotes rather than to learning any
aspects of language such as unknown vocabulary.
The participants appeared interested in listening
to the content of the teacher talk and looked to
be engaged in trying to understand the content
of the anecdotes. Participants were not aware of
The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
subsequent vocabulary tests, thus the treatment
met both Hulstijn’s (2001) and Ellis’s (1999) com-
monly used definitions of incidental learning.
Instruments
Meaning-Recall Test. A meaning-recall test was
used to measure knowledge of form–meaning
connection of single-word target items. The test
contained 36 items, 18 of which were the target
words. The other 18 items were high-frequency
words from the 1,000 and 2,000 word levels
that the participants were likely to know (see
Appendix B). The purpose of including high-
frequency words was to encourage participants to
complete the test. If only the target words were
included, the participants may have become dis-
couraged and not taken the tests seriously. How-
ever, only the responses for the 18 target items
were included in the analysis.
During the test, the participants heard a record-
ing of the words twice, and then wrote down any-
thing they could recall about the meaning of each
word in their L1 (Mandarin). If they did not know
the word meaning, they had the option to check
“I don’t know.” The translation could be a syn-
onym, an explanation, a paraphrase, or anything
else participants could use to demonstrate their
knowledge. The participants were given 30 sec-
onds to translate each word. The test was used
for the pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed
posttest to track and compare the progress of the
participants throughout the study. The test items
were randomly ordered between test administra-
tions to prevent the participants from remember-
ing the answers by recognizing the order of words.
In the scoring procedure, two different rating
scales were initially used: sensitive and strict. The
sensitive rating scale allowed measurement of par-
tial vocabulary knowledge. On this scale, 0, 0.5,
and 1 point were awarded to any incorrect, par-
tially correct, and fully correct response, respec-
tively. For example, for the word gravy, responses
of  ‘sugar,’   ‘a kind of sauce,’ and  
‘meat sauce’ were awarded 0, 0.5, and 1 point, re-
spectively. In the sensitive rating scale, two raters
were engaged in the coding process to enhance
the reliability of the coding. The second rater
coded 25% of the data and showed a high percent-
age agreement with an overall interrater reliabil-
ity of 97%. In the strict rating scale, 1 point was
awarded for fully correct responses and 0 points
were awarded for all other responses. Given that
there were 18 target words, the maximum ob-
tainable score was 18 in both systems. Measur-
ing partially and fully correct responses allows a
Zhouhan Jin and Stuart Webb
FIGURE 1
Sample Items From Multiple-Choice Test
Sample Items From Multiple-Choice Test
The participant hears:
Number one, comfort [1sec.]; A, take comfort [2 sec.]; B, lose comfort [2 sec.]; C, make
comfort [2 sec]; D, put comfort [2 sec]
[Then this sequence is repeated.]
Number four, talk [1sec.]; A, clear talk [2 sec.]; B, close talk [2 sec.]; C, pretty talk [2 sec];
D, small talk [2 sec]
[Then this sequence is repeated.]
The participant sees on paper:
1. A. take B. lose C. make D. put
4. A. clear B. close C. pretty D. small
more accurate assessment of potential learning
gains than measuring only fully correct responses
(Webb, 2008). However, the analyses revealed that
both scoring methods produced similar findings;
all results that were statistically significant with
sensitive scoring were also statistically significant
with strict scoring. Therefore, only the results with
strict scoring will be reported.
Multiple-Choice Test. A multiple-choice test was
used to measure receptive knowledge of colloca-
tions. The test was designed to measure knowl-
edge of the 10 target collocations and 10 high-
frequency collocations that the participants were
expected to know (see Appendix C). Only re-
sponses for the 10 target items were included in
the analysis. The items for the target collocations
were taken from Nguyen & Webb’s (2017) Recep-
tive Knowledge of Collocation Test. The test items
were randomly ordered between the pretest, im-
mediate posttest, and delayed posttest. One key,
three distractors, and an “I don’t know” option
were provided for each item. The participants lis-
tened to a recording of the test with the node
words orally presented along with the five op-
tions (key, distractors, “I don’t know”). They were
instructed to circle the correct collocate from
among the four choices. The options for the tar-
get items take comfort and small talk are shown in
Figure 1.
557
I don’t know
I don’t know
All data in this test were scored dichotomously
with 1 marked for a correct response and 0 for an
incorrect response.
Procedure. In the first week, all of the partici-
pants completed the VLT followed by the pretest,
which was made up of the meaning-recall test
followed by the multiple-choice test. This ses-
sion lasted approximately 70 minutes. The par-
ticipants were then randomly assigned to either
the experimental or control group. One week
later, participants in the experimental group com-
pleted the treatment and the immediate posttest.
Participants in the control group only completed
the immediate posttest. One week after the treat-
ment, all participants took a delayed posttest that
was made up of the meaning-recall test followed
by the multiple-choice test to investigate reten-
tion of the target items. Participants were given
sufficient time to complete all tests. After the
delayed posttest, all participants received a de-
briefing to clarify the real purpose of this study.
This session lasted approximately 40 minutes. The
overview of the research procedure can be seen in
Appendix D.
Analysis. SPSS (Version 23) was used to an-
alyze the data. The data from the participants
who missed any of the testing sessions (pretest,
immediate posttest, or delayed posttest) were
excluded from analysis. To answer the first RQ, a
558
repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted with
test timing as the within-participants variable
(pretest vs. posttest vs. delayed), and treatment as
the between-participants variable (experimental
vs. control). A follow-up pairwise comparison
using Bonferroni adjustment was carried out to
examine the mean difference within each group
at each testing time and the mean difference
between the experimental and control groups at
the three test time points.
In reading the results, there are two effect sizes
that should be noted. One is eta squared η2 ,
whereby .01 would be considered a small effect
size, around .06 a medium effect size, and 0.14
or above a large effect size. This effect size mea-
sures the proportion of the variation in the de-
pendent variable attributable to an independent
variable. Another effect size is Cohen’s d, which
is used to describe the standardized mean differ-
ence between subjects. A commonly used inter-
pretation is to refer to effect sizes as small (d =
0.2), medium (d = 0.5), and large (d = 0.8) based
on benchmarks suggested by Cohen (1988).
To answer the second RQ, a repeated-measures
analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to
assess whether mean differences existed on
multiple-choice test scores at different testing
times after controlling for each participant’s
pretest scores. Multiple-choice test scores were
used as dependent variables, treatment as the
between-participants variable (experimental vs.
control), and the pretest score as the covariate to
adjust for any pre-existing differences of each par-
ticipant’s pretest score on their knowledge of col-
location in this study. Bonferroni method was fol-
lowed to report statistical comparisons of the ex-
perimental and control groups.
To answer the third RQ, a logistic regression
was conducted to determine which variables ex-
plained the learning gains in the posttests. The
analysis is based on the number of cases and
not on total test scores or total learning gains
per participant. This means that the combination
participant–item–response defines for each ob-
servation a particular score (correct or incorrect)
TABLE 4
Means and Standard Deviations for Measuring Single Words in Meaning-Recall Test
Pretest
Scoring n M
Experimental 86 1.17
Control 54 1.13
Note. M = mean; SD = standard deviation. Maximum score is 18.
The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
on a particular item for a particular participant.
For each parameter, the odds ratio is calculated
that predicts the odds of a correct response. Be-
cause only single-word items received L1 trans-
lation, analyses were conducted for single-word
items and collocations separately. The following
parameters were included in the model for single-
word items: frequency of occurrence and L1 trans-
lation; only frequency of occurrence was included
in the model for collocations.
RESULTS
Descriptive statistics of the meaning-recall test
at the three test time points are presented in Ta-
ble 4. Results showed that from pretest to posttest,
both the experimental and control groups’ mean
scores increased. To determine whether there
were any differences within each group (exper-
imental and control) at different times of test-
ing (pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed
posttest), and whether there were differences
between the groups at each time of testing, a
repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted.
The ANOVA for single-word items in the
meaning-recall test revealed significant effects for
learning condition, F(2,137) = 13.571, p < .001,
partial η2 = 0.165 (large effect size); and for test-
ing time, F(2,137) = 41.923, p < .001, partial η2
= 0.380 (large effect size). A significant interac-
tion between learning condition and testing time
was also found, F(1.817,250.724) = 17.530, p <
.001, η2 = 0.113 (medium effect size). The pair-
wise comparison between pretest and posttest on
the meaning-recall test indicated that there was
a significant increase for the experimental group
between pretest and posttest, p < .001, with large
effect size η2 = .493; and between pretest and
delayed posttest, p < .001, with large effect size
η2 = .348. The increase for the control group was
only significant from the pretest to the posttest,
p = .04, with medium effect size η2 = .043. The
pairwise comparisons between pretest and im-
mediate posttest scores and between pretest and
Posttest Delayed Posttest
SD M SD M SD
1.89 4.02 2.87 3.12 2.92
1.83 1.91 2.17 1.72 2.01
Zhouhan Jin and Stuart Webb 559
TABLE 5
Means and Standard Deviations for Measuring Collocations in Multiple-Choice Test

Pretest Posttest Delayed Posttest

Group n M SD M SD M SD

Experimental 86 5.81 1.18 6.67 1.62 6.44 1.47

Control 54 5.28 1.35 5.15 1.31 5.33 1.32

Note. M = mean; SD = standard deviation. Maximum score is 10.

TABLE 6
Pairwise Comparison for Different Sections of the Tests

95% Confidence Interval

Time of Time of Difference Between Upper Lower

Testing (i) Testing (j) Means (j–i) SE p Bound Bound

MR Experimental
1 2 –2.849* .246 <.001 –3.445 –2.253
3 –1.942* .226 <.001 –2.490 –1.393
MR Control
1 2 –.778* .310 .04 –1.530 –.025
3 –.593 .286 .12 –1.285 –.100
MC Experimental
1 2 –.924* .169 <.001 –1.258 –.589
3 –.675* .157 <.001 –.986 –.364
MC Control
1 2 .230 .214 .284 –.193 .643
3 .020 .199 .921 –.373 .413

Note. MR = meaning-recall test; MC = multiple-choice test.

*p < .05.

delayed posttest scores are shown in Table 6. To
investigate the interaction between type of learn-
ing condition and testing time, the data were
subjected to a post hoc test using the Holm–
Bonferroni method.
Post hoc comparisons using the Bonferroni test
showed that there was no significant difference in
the pretest scores between the experimental and
control groups (p = .890). However, the experi-
mental group scored significantly higher on the
posttest, p < .001, with large effect size d = .996;
and delayed posttest, p = 0.003, with large effect
size d = .863; than the control group, indicating
that vocabulary learning can be attributed to lis-
tening to teachers.
Descriptive statistics of the multiple-choice test
at the three test time points are presented in
Table 5. The mean scores for the experimental
group increased from 5.81 to 6.67 whereas the
mean scores for the control group decreased from
5.28 to 5.15. The delayed posttest scores for both
groups increased from pretest to delayed posttest.
An ANCOVA revealed that there were signif-
icant effects for learning condition, F(1,137) =
33.249, p < .001, η2 = .195 (large effect size);
and for testing time, F(1,137) = 11.994, p = .001,
η2 = .081 (medium effect size). A significant in-
teraction was also found, F(2,274) = 9.714, p <
.001, η2 = 0.066 (medium effect size). The pair-
wise comparison between pretest and posttest on
the multiple-choice test indicated that there was a
significant increase between pretest and posttest,
p < .001, with large effect size η2 = .172; and be-
tween pretest and delayed posttest, p < .001, with
large effect size η2 = .119 for the experimental
group. No significant difference was found be-
tween pretest and posttest and between pretest
and delayed posttest for the control group. These
pairwise comparisons are shown in Table 6.
Post hoc comparisons using the Bonferroni test
showed that there was no significant difference
in the pretest scores between the experimental
and control groups, p = .102. However, the exper-
imental group scored significantly higher on the
560 The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
TABLE 7
Means and Standard Deviations of Two Experimental Conditions

Pretest Posttest Delayed Posttest

Conditions n M SD M SD M SD

Set 1 (with L1 translation) 86 0.63 1.12 2.45 1.59 1.73 1.50

Set 2 (without L1 translation) 86 0.55 0.97 1.57 1.82 1.38 1.74

Note. M = mean; SD = standard deviation; L1 = first language. Maximum score is 9.

TABLE 8
Logistic Regression for Meaning-Recall Test

Immediate Posttest Delayed Posttest

Parameter SE Odds Ratio p SE Odds Ratio p

FoO .028 1.037 .207 0.032 1.056 .09

L1 Translation .138 2.026 <.001 .154 1.488 .01

Note. FoO = frequency of occurrence; L1 = first language. There were 1,434 single-word observations (i.e., items
unknown on pretest).

posttest, p < .001, and delayed posttest, p < .001,
with small effect sizes, d = .178 and d = .108, re-
spectively, indicating that listening to teachers has
potential to enhance collocational learning inci-
dentally.
Descriptive statistics for words in Set 1 (with L1
translation) and Set 2 (without L1 translation) are
presented in Table 7. Results showed that learning
gains occurred in both learning conditions. When
words were translated into the L1, two and one
words were gained (out of nine learnable ones)
in the immediate and delayed posttest, respec-
tively, whereas words without translation yielded
one word in the immediate posttest and less than
one word in the delayed posttest. To determine
whether there was a significant relationship be-
tween learning gains and the different factors (L1
translation, frequency of occurrence), a logistic
regression was conducted.
A logistic regression was carried out with the
data from the immediate posttest and delayed
posttest on both the meaning-recall test and
multiple-choice test for the experimental group
to determine the relationship between learning
gains and one or two variables (frequency of oc-
currence and L1 translation for single-word items;
frequency of occurrence for collocations). Re-
sponses for the 18 target single-word items and
10 target collocations were examined. The words
that the 86 participants in the experimental group
already knew before the treatment were excluded.
Therefore, if a response for a test item was incor-
rect for a participant in the pretest, then this item
was not known and could potentially be learned.
The analysis in total was computed for 1,794
observations, indicating that there were 1,794
items that the participants did not know before
the treatment and could potentially be learned.
Among the 1,794 observations, 1,434 were single
words and 360 were collocations.
The analysis revealed that L1 translation con-
tributed significantly to the model for single-
word items in the immediate posttest and delayed
posttest (see Table 8). However, frequency of
occurrence (ranging from 3 to 10 encounters) did
not contribute significantly to word learning or re-
tention. The odds ratio values showed that when a
target word was translated by the teacher, the odds
of a correct response were two times higher in the
immediate posttest, and 48.8% higher in the de-
layed posttest.
The analysis run for collocations had 360 ob-
servations (i.e., items unknown on the pretest).
The results showed that frequency of occurrence
(ranging from three to six encounters) did not
have significant correlation with the immediate
posttest or delayed posttest (see Table 9).
DISCUSSION
In answer to the first RQ, the results indi-
cated that, out of 18 target words, participants
in the experimental group gained knowledge of
2.85 (15.8%) and 2 (12%) words on average
in the posttest and delayed posttest, respectively,
Zhouhan Jin and Stuart Webb
TABLE 9
Logistic Regression for Multiple-Choice Test
Immediate Posttest
Parameter SE Odds Ratio
FoO .101 1.082
Note. FoO = frequency of occurrence. There were 360 observations (i.e., items unknown on pretest).
whereas the participants in the control group
learned on average 0.78 (4.3%) and 0.6 words
(3.6%). Although students in the control group
were not exposed to the treatment, their scores
increased slightly. This may have been due to a
testing effect. It is possible that students learn
words through repeated encounters of test items
because re-exposure to test items could lead to
retrieval of information from memory (Rowland,
2014). The significantly larger learning gains with
large effect size by the experimental group pro-
vide evidence that listening to teachers in EFL
classrooms contributes to incidental L2 vocabu-
lary learning of single-word items. This is use-
ful because it suggests that the meaning-focused
speech that students encounter in the classroom
is another source of incidental vocabulary learn-
ing. These results expand on those of earlier stud-
ies that have shown that reading (Horst, Cobb,
& Meara, 1998; Waring & Takaki, 2003), listening
(van Zeeland & Schmitt, 2013; Vidal, 2003), read-
ing while listening (Brown et al., 2008; Webb &
Chang, 2012), and viewing (Peters & Webb, 2018)
contribute to L2 incidental learning of single-
word items. Although the results revealed rela-
tively small learning gains, listening to teachers
in the current study only lasted 26 minutes rep-
resenting a very small proportion of the spoken
input that students encounter in the classroom.
It is thus important to note that incidental vo-
cabulary gains tend to occur in small increments
and greater learning would likely occur if learn-
ers were exposed to larger quantities of input with
further exposure to items (Webb & Nation, 2017).
In answer to the second RQ, the results in-
dicated that listening to teacher talk in a class-
room contributed to small but significant learn-
ing gains. There are several reasons why the gains
in knowledge of collocations might be relatively
small. First, Barcroft’s (2002) type of processing-
resource allocation (TOPRA) model suggested
that form and meaning of new information are
separate mental components. If learners’ seman-
tically oriented learning increases, form process-
ing and form learning will decrease. The partici-
561
Delayed Posttest
p SE Odds Ratio p
.434 .104 .936 .524
pants in this study may have focused more on un-
derstanding the meaning of the content, leading
to fewer processing resources available to attend
to the collocating words. Second, in the present
study, the learners might have been less likely to
attend to the unknown target collocations (e.g.,
small talk) than the unknown single-word items
(e.g., blizzard) because the words that made up
target collocations were familiar to participants.
This may have led them to assume that they un-
derstood the collocations. Third, learners may
choose different combinations based on their L1
patterns. For instance, gain knowledge and receive
knowledge have the same meaning in Chinese mak-
ing it difficult to identify the correct collocation
on the receptive knowledge of collocation test.
Fourth, learners may overgeneralize vocabulary
knowledge based on their learning experience.
For example, Chinese students are often told that
make has many meanings, so it can often combine
with other words such as make cakes, make up, and
make somebody feel comfortable. Therefore, when they
heard the node word comfort and the option make
on the receptive test, they might overgeneralize
the use of make to create make comfort instead of
take comfort.
In answer to the third RQ, the results showed
that L1 translation was significantly associated
with incidental vocabulary learning of single-word
items in both the immediate posttest and de-
layed posttest. However, there was no relationship
between frequency of occurrence and learning
single-word items and collocations.
The results revealed a positive relationship be-
tween L1 translation and vocabulary learning in
the immediate posttest as well as in the delayed
posttest for single-word items. Moreover, students
could learn two words on average if words were
translated into L1, and one word for target items
that were not translated. This suggests that L2
words are learned incidentally through listening
to teachers, but the use of L1 translations to con-
vey meanings increases the likelihood that L2
words will be learned. Providing L1 translations
for unknown words might make these items more
562
salient and also reduce the chance that these
words will be incorrectly guessed. The finding
is supported by studies of reading-while-listening
that have shown that when teachers elaborate on
the meanings of unknown words encountered in
stories that were read aloud, it enhanced vocabu-
lary learning gains (Biemiller & Boote, 2006; El-
ley, 1989).
One unanticipated finding was the lack of a re-
lationship between frequency of occurrence and
vocabulary learning. This contrasts with many ear-
lier studies that have revealed frequency of oc-
currence to have a positive impact on L2 vo-
cabulary learning (e.g., van Zeeland & Schmitt,
2013; Vidal, 2003). There are two possible ex-
planations for this finding. First, the number of
encounters with target items in this study may
have been insufficient. Research indicates that
learners may need to encounter unknown sin-
gle words 10 times (Webb, 2007) and collocations
15 times (Webb et al., 2013) for sizable learning
gains to occur. However, in this study, only two
target words (savor and crave) were encountered
10 times, and most items were only encountered
around 4 times. Second, within this study, the ef-
fects of L1 translation may have reduced the con-
tributions of frequency on vocabulary learning.
Because of the large amount of research indicat-
ing that frequency of occurrence typically leads to
learning, it would be useful to further investigate
its contribution to incidental vocabulary learning
through listening in a classroom in follow-up stud-
ies.
PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
The present study clearly indicates that listen-
ing to teachers in EFL classrooms is another
source of input that may contribute to L2 lex-
ical development. This suggests that a teaching
approach that involves regularly including target
words and collocations in teacher speech should
be considered to further help students learn vo-
cabulary incidentally. Although there is an ongo-
ing debate about the extent to which L2 teachers
should use the L1 in the classroom, the positive
relationship between L1 translation and learn-
ing gains in the immediate posttest and delayed
posttest suggests that elaborating on word mean-
ings using L1 translations in the classroom is ben-
eficial and more effective for helping students to
learn and retain vocabulary than not using L1
translation. Moreover, if teachers can briefly ex-
plain L1 and L2 differences in specific colloca-
tions, learners may learn collocations more ef-
fectively (Laufer & Waldman, 2011). In addition,
The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
due to a decay of vocabulary knowledge on the
delayed posttest, the findings suggest that teach-
ers should try to recycle target words frequently
in spoken input or to have students use words
so that knowledge of target words may be con-
solidated. One class activity, Listen Very Carefully,
described by Nation (1994) asks students to lis-
ten and remember what they hear and recall the
words based on their descriptions. This is a useful
way to help learners consolidate knowledge of the
target words.
LIMITATIONS
Several limitations of the current study should
be considered. First, it should be noted that listen-
ing was limited to only 26 minutes in this study.
The small amount of L2 exposure may result in
marginal learning gains and modulate the effec-
tiveness of listening to teachers. Research suggests
that if the quantity of input and length of study
increase, vocabulary learning gains may also in-
crease (Webb & Chang, 2015)—so it would be use-
ful to investigate vocabulary learning through lis-
tening to different amounts of teacher talk.
Second, the teacher’s recorded anecdotes ex-
amined in this study may not be representative of
other types of teaching. Listening to a video is not
quite the same as listening to a teacher talk in per-
son. Also, because the content of the teacher talk
was close to the participants’ life and contained in-
teresting topics and stories, the students were very
attentive. Teaching approaches and the content
delivered by teachers are likely to vary consider-
ably between classrooms, so we should be cautious
about generalizing the findings to other contexts.
It would thus be useful to examine how learning
gains differ through listening to different types
and different amounts of teacher speech to in-
crease the generalizability of the findings.
Third, although the study tried to select two
sets of equivalent target items by controlling the
part of speech, number of letters, and their fre-
quency of occurrence, it is possible that the two
sets of words were not equivalent in their ease
of learning. Therefore, it would be useful for fu-
ture studies to use a single set of target words
in a between-participants design to get a more
accurate assessment of how translation enhances
learning through listening to meaning-focused in-
put.
Finally, the collocation test showed that learn-
ers had made relatively small gains in knowledge
of the forms of collocations rather than their
form–meaning connections. It would be useful
for future research to investigate the degree to
Zhouhan Jin and Stuart Webb
which the form–meaning connections of colloca-
tions are also learned through listening to teacher
talk.
CONCLUSION
The present study indicated that listening
to teachers contributes to incidental vocabulary
learning of individual words and marginal gains
in knowledge of collocations. The findings indi-
cate that teachers should be encouraged to reg-
ularly include target words and collocations in
their speech to further help students learn vocab-
ulary incidentally. In addition, L1 translation of
unknown word meanings delivered by the teacher
enhanced learning gains for single-word items.
The positive relationship between L1 translation
and learning gains indicates that it is useful for
teachers to briefly translate unfamiliar words into
the L1 to increase comprehension and vocabu-
lary learning. Together these results reveal that
teachers contribute to the development of their
students’ vocabulary knowledge not only through
the deliberate teaching of vocabulary, but also
through increasing students’ knowledge of the
words that they hear from teachers. Because this
was the first empirical study to explore the po-
tential for learning words incidentally through lis-
tening to teacher talk, it would be useful for fu-
ture studies to further explore ways of examining
what students can learn from listening to differ-
ent forms and amounts of teacher talk, as well as
teacher–student and student–student interaction.
Open Research Badges
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terials badges. Data and materials are available at
https://www.iris-database.org.
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Zhouhan Jin and Stuart Webb 565

APPENDIX A

Open Questions
(Time indicates the starting point of each question raised in the video-taped teacher talk.)
51 seconds: If you have a chance to go abroad, which country do you want to visit?
7 minutes 30 seconds: Do you have any experiences that are very important in your life or had a great
influence on you? If not, just share with us the country or city you’ve been to and how you feel of it.
12 minutes 30 seconds: Do you love your university life here? And do you have any plans after graduating?
21 minutes 54 seconds: Can you briefly introduce the food in your hometown or the foods you like?

APPENDIX B

Meaning-Recall Test

Please write down the meaning of the words you heard in Chinese. The translation can be a synonym, an explanation,
a paraphrase, or anything else you can use to explain the word meaning. If you are not sure about this word, please
choose “I don’t know.”

1. ___________________________________________  I don’t know

2. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
3. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
4. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
5. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
6. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
7. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
8. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
9. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
10. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
11. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
12. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
13. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
14. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
15. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
16. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
17. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
18. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
19. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
20. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
21. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
22. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
23. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
24. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
25. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
26. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
27. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
28. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
29. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
30. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
31. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
32. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
33. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
566 The Modern Language Journal 104 (2020)
34. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
35. ___________________________________________  I don’t know
36. ___________________________________________  I don’t know

APPENDIX C

Multiple-Choice Test
Please circle the right answer based on what you hear to make a phrase; if you are not sure, please choose “I don’t
know.”
Example, A. move play C. run D. try  I don’t know
1. A. take B. lose C. make D. put  I don’t know
2. A. lose B. fall C. raise D. reach  I don’t know
3. A. have B. put C. take D. use  I don’t know
4. A. clear B. close C. pretty D. small  I don’t know
5. A. quick B. awful C. fast D. ready  I don’t know
6. A. drop B. make C. hold D. send  I don’t know
7. A. far B. wide C. hard D. long  I don’t know
8. A. daily B. extra C. messy D. simple  I don’t know
9. A. contain B. gain C. process D. receive  I don’t know
10. A. add B. make C. see D. feel  I don’t know
11. A. find B. hold C. pay D. return  I don’t know
12. A. do B. manage C. plan D. prepare  I don’t know
13. A. feel B. keep C. see D. show  I don’t know
14. A. drop B. catch C. hunt D. miss  I don’t know
15. A. feel B. lose C. show D. look  I don’t know
16. A. cause B. make C. move D. stop  I don’t know
17. A. get B. take C. give D. have  I don’t know
18. A. ask B. make C. get D. put  I don’t know
19. A. become B. begin C. change D. lose  I don’t know
20. A. certain B. different C. important D. simple  I don’t know

APPENDIX D

Overview of Research Procedure

Group Week 1 Week 2 Week 3

Experimental Consent form Treatment Delayed meaning-recall

Vocabulary Levels Test
Pretest (meaning-recall
and multiple-choice test)
Control Consent form
Vocabulary Levels Test
Pretest (meaning-recall
and multiple-choice test)
Immediate meaning-recall
and multiple-choice test
Immediate meaning-recall
and multiple-choice test
and multiple-choice test
Debriefing form
Delayed meaning-recall
and multiple-choice test
Debriefing form

SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section at the
end of the article.